Real Detective (2016) s01e08 Episode Script

(Narrator)
This case tore this city apart.
Destroyed the police department,
destroyed the community,
and pretty much destroyed
my faith in humanity.
Everybody was wondering
who was out there
taking our children.
You began to not trust anybody.
- Rachel, did you kill your son?
- I did not kill Zach.
- I had never had nightmares
like I had on this case.
- This is code. We crack this,
we have all his deepest,
darkest secrets right here.
- (Narrator) The thought of the
investigation was 24/7.
It had
(sniffles and sobs)
- Ah, come here, you.
I missed you guys.
- And my whole life went
(sound of falling bomb)
(sniffling)
(theme music)
(Narrator)
Well, I moved to Great Falls
because I had just completed
the police academy in Minnesota
and fell in love with the place.
And I fell right
into one of the cases
that changed my whole life.
(door closes)
(distant horn honking)
- Can I help you?
- Is John Cameron here?
- Detective Cameron?
Yeah, he's here.
- Can I talk to him?
- What's it about?
- I'd rather just talk to John,
please.
Yeah, have a seat.
(phone ringing)
So what's the problem?
- It's Zach.
- Is he OK?
I don't know. Um
He was fine when he left
for school this morning
and then I got a call.
They said he didn't show up.
He didn't show up to
school this morning?
That's what they said.
I went down to the school,
I talked to the principal
and I thought he'd
come home after.
I was mad at him.
I thought he'd skipped school.
I was gonna ground him
and then
he never came home.
(Narrator)
Palmer was a tenacious
detective and he was the head
of the child abuse
and sexual abuse unit.
So he dealt
with kids all the time.
- How old is Zach?
- He's ten.
We're neighbors.
Same age as my oldest.
Seems like a good kid.
- He's a good boy.
- Are they friends?
They know each other,
but they go to different
schools.
- Did you call Zach's friends?
- Yeah, I called everyone.
Andno one's seen him.
But he's got to be somewhere,
right?
Everything was OK when he left
for school this morning?
- Yes.
- OK.
Do you have a photograph of him?
Yeah.
I always carry pictures of Zach.
Can you tell us what he
was wearing when he left
for school this morning?
Uh, what he always wears.
Um, jeans, sneakers,
- blue jacket.
- All blue?
No team name on it,
anything like that?
- Just blue with green plaid.
- OK. We'll get on it.
- (phone ringing)
- (indistinct conversation)
Don't worry, Rachel.
We're gonna do everything
we can.
- We'll find him, I promise.
- Thank you.
He was a great kid,
he really was,
with a smile that most people
just don't have, you know?
And never saw him angry.
He was just a well-liked
neighborhood kid.
And everybody knew him.
We're looking for
a 10-year-old boy.
Zachary Ramsay,
probably skipped school,
went off exploring.
Now it's cold and it's dark.
Check the alleys;
check the parks. He might have
wandered off into the woods.
Kid's probably scared.
Let's find him.
(indistinct police radio)
(Narrator)
On the night Zach disappeared,
the first thing we did
is send our whole patrol
team out, down the alleys,
through the vacant houses
in the neighborhood
checking the banks
of the river,
the ice on the ponds
in Gibson Park.
Asking all of his classmates,
"Have you seen him?
Where would he hang out?"
And nobody had seen him
that day.
- (man) Eight guys,
eight feet apart!
- Start here then walk out!
- (indistinct radios)
- Nine times out of ten,
kids are back home by now.
- Yeah, I'm gonna
get some sleep.
- All right. I'm gonna stay on,
keep looking with these guys.
I know them, Sam.
They're my neighbors.
- All right.
(sighing)
- And we put it out on the news
and the newspapers.
We passed out flyers.
We went to the radio.
It was all over.
- (indistinct radio call)
(beeping)
- Well, in Great Falls, when we
would have missing kids,
we would usually find them
within a day, maybe two.
After Zach was missing 24 hours,
I suspected it was something
much more sinister.
You just don't disappear off
the street without a sign
unless you've been taken.
(engine turns over)
- Just got a call.
Someone confessed
to kidnapping Zach Ramsay.
A trucker. They're holding him
at the scene.
- (Narrator) We get a call
from the highway patrol
and they have
a trucker pulled over.
They find out that the guy's
completely obsessed
with Zach Ramsay.
He's saying sexual things
that tie in with Zach.
He seems to know a lot about him
and he's a trucker who drives
through Great Falls,
which gives him access
to come through the town
and kidnap a child.
- Talk.
- Zach was a beautiful boy.
I'll never forget him.
- Where'd you meet him?
- It's my business.
- So you're claiming
you abducted Zach
and now you don't want to talk?
- I'm not gonna make it easy
for you, Detective.
Just like I didn't make it easy
for Zach.
(tense music)
-(Narrator) But when his truck
was searched,
we found no evidence
to connect him to the abduction.
The truth is, the trucker
was in Spokane, Washington,
five hundred miles away
from Great Falls
on the day Zach disappeared.
Sometimes in investigations
every nut in the world comes out
and that's exactly
what happened here,
is this guy was not
even capable of being
in Great Falls at the time
that it happened.
- (man) It's just awful
about that missing boy.
- (Cameron)
Yeah, tell me about it.
I just hope he wasn't taken
by one of those monsters.
- Any news?
- Still looking.
Hey, if you hear anything,
any rumblings
you let us know.
- Yeah, I'll put it up.
Never know what'll happen.
(birds chirping)
-(Narrator)
At the time Zach disappeared,
I had three kids.
One was Zach's age and
two were a little bit younger.
And to think that in the same
neighborhood that I lived in,
that a little boy, 10 years old,
could just disappear was scary.
It made you wonder if you wanted
to let your kids go out.
- (laughing) Hey, guys. Ah!
Come here, you.
I missed you guys.
Hi, sweetheart.
Hey, buddy. Yeah, let's go wait
in the car for Mommy, OK?
Come on, come on.
Come on, come on.
My lady.
All right, everybody in?
See you guys later, OK?
Hi.
- Hey.
- You know I'm working nights.
- And days. I haven't
seen you in three days.
- Yeah, I know. I'm sorry.
Hey, guys, I'm sorry.
- Will you be home for dinner?
- I don't know.
- I worry about you.
- I'll be fine.
(birds chirping)
Go on.
Drive safely.
- (door closes)
- (car starting)
(sighs)
- (Narrator)
I couldn't let it go.
I really am an obsessive
detective.
And it's just how I am.
When the trucker didn't pan out,
the investigation actually
stymied for a long time.
But then one of the neighbors
came to the police station.
- And you're sure this was
the night before
Zach disappeared?
- Yeah, there was a lot
of yelling and screaming
coming from Rachel's house.
Sounded like a big fight.
- Between Zach and Rachel?
- Maybe.
I didn't think much of it
at the time, but then I heard
he was missing.
So I figured I should come in
and let you guys know.
- Maybe we should take
a closer look at the mother.
- Yeah.
Thank you.
- Look, we know you had
a big fight with Zach.
Why didn't you tell us about it?
- It wasn't a big fight.
- Yelling and screaming,
banging on the walls.
Seems pretty big to me.
Tell me again, when was
the last time you saw Zach?
- I told you,
when he left for school.
- Rachel, no one else
saw Zach that morning.
No one's seen him
since he left this house.
- He was here all night.
He went to school.
I keep telling you--
- Rachel.
Do you mind if we have
a look around?
- (sighs)
Go ahead.
- (Narrator)
We decided to bring the dogs
through the house
to see if they
would hit on anything.
(sniffing)
Our dogs were cadaver dogs
and what they hit on
is the scent of a dead person.
And as the dog
went down the stairs
it actually hit at
the bottom of the stairs,
which means that
a possible dead body
had been lying there.
- What happened to the rug?
- I spilled something.
We're replacing it.
(dog panting)
(sniffing)
(whining and barking)
(barking)
- You got something?
Cameron.
That look like blood to you?
-(Narrator)
Palmer's theory was that
there had been a fight inside
the house. Maybe Rachel
hit Zach,
maybe he
fell down the stairs.
Maybe he was
accidentally killed.
So at that point,
Palmer was concentrated
on Rachel as a suspect.
- Were you with Zach
the night before he disappeared?
- Yes.
- Did you have
an argument with him?
- Yes.
- Did you hurt him?
- No.
- Did Zach go to school the
morning of his disappearance?
- Yes.
- Did you see someone take him?
- No.
- Did you see Zach talk with
anyone when he left the house?
- No.
(clicking)
(sighing)
- Rachel
Did you kill your son?
- Of course not.
- Was it an accident?
- Was what an accident?
- You didn't mean to.
You were just trying
to discipline him.
- I did not kill Zach.
My Zach is still alive.
I'm sure of it.
- Where is he, Rachel?
- I don't know. Why aren't
you looking for him?
- Where should we look?
Tell us, Rachel.
Did you kill your son?
- No!
- Rachel, did you kill your son?
- No!
- Over and over again, she
was treated that way.
"You killed your kid!
"You hurt your kid.
Tell us what happened.
Where is he at?
Let's end this right now."
- Rachel, did you kill Zach?
- No. I've had enough of this.
Here, you want to charge me?
Charge me. Otherwise,
I'm walking out of here.
- Rachel.
Rachel!
- Hey, Rachel.
- Bring him back!
- You still think she had
nothing to do with this?
- You had her
in there for six hours.
- All the evidence points
directly to her.
You just can't see it.
- You're not seeing
the bigger picture.
Come on, Sam!
What did the poly say?
- It said she was being
deceptive.
Every time I asked her if she
killed her son, we got a hit.
- It was under duress. Let's
hook you up to this thing--
- John, open your eyes and
look at this for what it is.
We both want
the same thing here.
- Do we?
- When Rachel left
that office that day
in the rage that she left in,
I actually felt relieved,
because the way she reacted
proved to me that she didn't
kill her kid.
- Rachel, wait.
- I've said everything
I'm gonna say.
- Look, I believe you, OK?
(sigh)
- I don't care
if you believe me or not.
Just find my son.
(door opens)
(keys jingle)
(door shutting)
(engine starting)
- I will.
- All right, who lives
in the area
that has a conviction
for a sex offense
or is suspected?
And what were they
doing on that day?
We found out very early on
that Zach used to live next door
to a sex offender, "Doc."
- I had no idea they had so many
sex offenders in Great Falls.
- Yeah, everything from guys
exposing themselves in parks
to serial rapists.
We got to check them all.
- This guy's, like,
almost 70-years-old.
- Yeah, Doc, I know him.
He's, uh He's unique.
Zach would have to walk by here
every day on the way to school.
Doc Bauman had a past
of being a pedophile.
(knocking)
(door opening)
Hey, Doc. Invite us in.
- I was just going to bed.
- Oh, yeah? With who?
Anybody here, Doc?
- Just me.
Who you looking for?
Maybe I seen him.
- How'd you know it was a him?
-(Narrator)
They called him Doc Bauman
because he claimed
that he was a doctor.
And that's a ruse
to bring in kids.
You know, you're a professional.
You're a doctor.
- You see? I'm all alone.
- Keep it that way, Doc.
-(Narrator)
We were able to write off
Doc Bauman fairly early
in the investigation.
He was alibied.
- That is one creepy old man.
- Molesting boys
since the 1940s.
-(Narrator)
The department checked all sex
offenders and violent offenders
and they all had alibies.
(knocking)
(beeping)
- (man) And the envelope.
(tapping)
- What's this?
- It's the lab report on the rug
at Zach's house.
- It's not blood.
- No, it isn't.
There's nothing at the house.
No evidence of a fight. Nothing.
- I know there's something
Rachel's not telling us.
So do you.
-(Narrator)
Tunnel vision set in
and that happens a lot of times
in these types of cases.
Sometimes the same facts
that one officer has
doesn't match what
another officer thinks.
And so what I've always found
is you just step back
to the beginning
and go through the basics.
Find out what
Zach did that morning.
(kissing sound)
- Have a good day.
-(Narrator)
Rachel said he left the house.
And that he walked
down the alley.
So I walked the alley to see
exactly what he would have seen.
(birds cawing)
- Hey. How you doing?
Do you guys usually
walk through here?
- Yeah, it's faster
to get to school.
- You don't remember a boy
named Zachary Ramsay, do you?
- The boy who went missing?
- Yeah.
Did you happen
to see him that day?
- Yeah, for sure I saw him.
- You did? And you're sure
it was the same day?
- I remember it was the same
day. We saw him on our
way to school.
- Did you happen to see him
with anybody else?
Was he talking to somebody?
- There was a policeman.
- A policeman?
- Yeah, he was talking to Zach.
- Where was that?
Was that right here?
- No, near the shortcut.
- Shortcut?
OK, great.
Hey, thank you very much.
You guys be safe, OK?
OK, have a good day.
Shortcut.
- (Narrator)
I had no idea there was
a shortcut to the school
that he may have taken.
(footsteps)
(birds chirping)
(flash sound)
(zipping)
- We might finally
have a piece of evidence
that could lead us
to what happened to Zach.
(indistinct police radio)
Why don't you start
knocking on some doors?
- Yeah. Guys, round
me up some witnesses.
-(Narrator)
I believed Rachel had nothing
to do with Zach's disappearance.
She believed that Zach
would walk through
that front door someday
someday and he would be alive.
(knocking)
(door unlatches)
- John?
- Is this Zach's?
- Does this mean he's alive?
You getting closer
to finding him?
Zach could be alive?
- We're still looking, Rachel.
- (whispering) Thank you.
- OK.
- OK.
- (quietly) Thank you.
- (Narrator)
So the two girls had mentioned
seeing a police officer
in the alley following Zach.
It leads you to wonder,
did we have somebody
sick on our department?
You know, is there
a possibility that somebody
within is involved in this?
- Hey, Palmer, hang on.
We need to talk.
You have to take the Zach Ramsay
case further than Rachel.
- No, I don't.
- We found his jacket
on top of a dumpster,
very close to where
he went missing.
- What do you mean you found it?
- I retraced his
morning walk to school.
Turns out there's a shortcut
that we never noticed before.
I found it in the dumpster right
there on the very same route
he takes every day.
How did you miss it?
- Well, maybe we didn't miss it.
Maybe she left it
there after we looked.
You're not helping, you know.
- All right, Palmer.
How about two witnesses, then?
I talked to two girls that saw
Zach Ramsay on the way to school
the day he went missing.
- Well, maybe they're confused.
- They weren't confused.
They also said they saw him
talking to a cop.
- Doesn't change the fact that
Rachel's our prime suspect--
- Enough with Rachel, Sam.
I established a timeline.
The kid was on
his way to school.
I gave you two witnesses.
The jacket.
There's no blood found
at the home.
What else do you want?
- (Narrator) I was furious.
Do we have somebody
within the department
doing this?
There are some guys
and you might want to suspect.
(lock latches)
(creaking)
- (Cameron) Hi.
I thought you were sleeping.
- I was. I just couldn't.
Can't get Rachel and
little Zach off my mind.
-(Narrator) That's kind of when
the obsessive-compulsive nature
of me came in.
I became completely obsessed,
going through
all the possibilities
of what could have
happened to this kid.
(horn blows)
- Mike, who was working the
Southeast February 6th?
- Weekday?
- Yeah, Tuesday.
- Sullivan. I don't even
have to look it up.
- Would you mind
looking it up anyway?
- Oh, sorry. Sullivan
wasn't working that morning.
A truck was jackknifed
on the highway.
We had every patrol
on that until almost noon.
No one was working
the beat on that day.
- None of us were in
that area at that time.
And so we had no idea who this
person was dressed in blue
appearing to be a police officer
in the alley
where Zach disappeared.
What a perfect ruse.
Every child trusts a policeman.
It's not unusual for a pedophile
to use the ruse of the uniform.
- If it wasn't Sullivan,
who was it?
Only one way
to find out, I guess.
- Stakeout?
- Yeah, unless you have
a better idea.
- (Narrator)
I knew that something was up.
And that we had
a predator in the midst.
Predators are habituated
and they stick
with the same patterns.
Therefore, our job was to stake
out Zach's school and see,
is there anybody
walking around the area
that looks anything
like a policeman?
Stakeouts are probably the most
long, drawn out, boring things
in the world, because you're
looking for one small moment
in time to happen while
you happen to be there
for that eight
hours of your day.
I knew that's our man.
I mean, it was like that.
(school bell ringing)
- Hey! How's your day going?
- Hey.
- (camera flash)
- Just awful about
that missing boy.
- What the hell you doing here?
- Nothing.
- Why are you
dressed like a cop?
- I don't know. Just wanted to.
- Put your hands up.
Put your hands up now!
Place your hands on your head.
- The moment he was
caught around that school
I knew that he may
have killed Zach Ramsay.
- I'm gonna search you now.
Do you have anything
in your pockets
that can injure me?
- Yes, sir.
I have a stun gun
in my right pocket.
And I have pepper
spray in the left.
(children playing
in the distance)
- What's your name?
- Nathanael Bar-Jonah.
- Nathanael, what are
you doing hanging out
in front of a school?
- I like it here.
- I bet you do.
What the hell is this?
- It's a toy. I swear.
- Why do you have
a toy gun in your pocket?
- I like to dress up
like a real cop.
- Impersonating an officer
is a very serious offense.
You and I are gonna
take a trip to the station.
Get this guy processed.
- Yep.
- I would like
to call my lawyer.
- Oh, you've got
to be kidding me.
- No, sir.
I believe it's my right.
- All right,
get this guy a phone.
- We had Bar-Jonah in custody
for impersonating an officer.
But he lawyered up
and we couldn't talk to him.
- This is ridiculous. Guy's
dressed like that right by
Zach's school.
He's got to be a suspect.
I can't even talk to him?
(sighs) Do you have anything?
Criminal record,
license, anything?
- You're not gonna believe this.
- What?
- He was arrested here a couple
years ago for molesting
an 8-year-old.
- Oh, come on, you got to be
kidding me. How did we miss him?
- The guy's a monster.
Hey, where you going?
- Look who worked the case!
You were so zeroed-in on Rachel
you let this monster slip
right through your fingers.
- Whoa, calm down, Cameron.
He was on my list. We looked
into him, he was clean.
- Looked into him? It says right
here you left a note for him
to call back and then nothing.
How does that make him clean?
- Hey, you're
out of line, Cameron.
- You're out to lunch, Palmer!
Read the file.
He never called back.
No one followed up.
I'm pulling a warrant
on Bar-Jonah's place.
(tense music)
- (Narrator) The place was
a house of horrors.
The mess, the stench
I'll never forget it.
It was like a dungeon.
Because not only
was it a basement,
and it was dark
and dingy and smelly,
we were walking
into a place that
something horrible has happened.
And this man is sick.
(indistinct police radio)
Stop. Get Frost out of here.
- That's my son.
That's my son.
- Chip, get him out of here.
- I'll kill the son-of-a-bitch!
- Get him out of here.
- (quietly) I'll kill him.
-(Narrator)
When Frost realized that
Bar-Jonah had been collecting
pictures of his own kid
he just became completely
emotionally engaged
in the case.
At that point it
became very personal for him.
This was a grown man keeping
pictures of children we knew.
It was almost as if it was
a baseball card collection.
I searched every photo
looking for my children
and he didn't have none of them.
Thank God.
- Pick this place apart.
Any sign of Zach
any sign of any kid, I want it.
(radio chatter)
- And the most important thing
to Nathan Bar-Jonah was his bed.
Behind the bed, as a headboard,
was a piece of plywood.
You could see that somebody
had driven a knife
through the shape
of a 10-year-old boy
laid out on the board.
At every tendon, at every spot
that you would cut him up.
- Get this to the lab.
You find every knife
in this place.
Take all of this.
All of it.
(short breaths)
-(Narrator)
I think everybody that went
to that scene
and saw all those pictures
thought of their own kids.
I never thought that somebody
would do what he did.
It was overwhelming.
So overwhelming that we realized
we'd need a U-Haul truck
and that we would just take
everything in there
bring it to the station,
and figure out,
"What do we have here?"
It ended up filling up an entire
room in the police department.
Took us weeks to go through
Nathan Bar-Jonah's
journals and photographs.
Coming across lists
and strangely-written writings.
And I'll never forget
staring at them,
going what in heck is this?
What is
What is all this saying?
- It's gonna take forever
to get through all this.
This guy's a nut job.
Half this stuff is nonsense.
- Nah, Bar-Jonah's too clever
for this to be nonsense.
- And what we found was Nathan
was writing in code.
- This is not gibberish.
This is code. We crack this,
we have all his deepest,
darkest secrets right here.
-(Narrator)
Picture a detective
sitting in a room,
going through boxes
and boxes of paper
and finding these codes
and looking at them going,
"What does this mean?
What does this mean?"
(papers rustling)
I'd get off work at five,
and I'd work on Zach Ramsay
until ten at night.
I'd wake up at one
in the morning and I'd work
on Zach Ramsay
until four in the morning.
Yeah, it was just 24/7.
But no matter how much
we searched, we hadn't found
anything on Zach.
- I think I got it.
Skip a letter. Look.
NAT
HA
NAEL.
Nathanael. I bet his whole name
is in there.
Nathanael
Benjamin Levi Bar-Jonah.
Look at this. D-A-V-I-D
P-A-U-L.
- They're all names.
- Boys' names.
- Who knows how many
he molested in Great Falls?
But it would be well over 100,
I'm sure.
- We got to go
through all these.
- Every last one.
Zach's in here somewhere.
- (Narrator) Once we cracked
that code, we realized
that it had a very
deliberate meaning.
Nathan's identification,
his name,
how he groomed children
and then what he did to them.
He was able to write that down,
relive it on a daily basis
knowing that the cops
would never figure it out.
But we did.
- I found him.
Zachary Ramsay.
Keep reading.
- And at the very end of that
list was the name Zach Ramsay
and right after it,
it said "died."
And that really was how we knew
Nathan killed Zach.
I'll never forget the day.
We looked at each other
and we said,
"Oh, my God."
(sniffles and sobs)
We cracked your code.
We have your knives,
the board behind your bed.
It's over. We got you.
Where's Zach's body?
What did you do
with Zach's body?
You know, everyone
thinks you're crazy.
But I don't.
- I know exactly what I'm doing.
- (Narrator) I sat down with him
and just asked him,
will you please tell
what happened to Zach?
And he actually said he would.
But of course he didn't, because
that was just his mindset of,
"Ha ha ha,
you're never gonna know."
Knowing that we were
never gonna find Zach.
We were gonna go to trial
with a no-body prosecution,
which is one of the hardest
things to do,
because if you don't
have a body,
you don't have a murder.
I immediately
got a hold of Rachel.
Rachel, we know who
kidnapped your son.
His name is Nathanael Bar-Jonah.
He actually goes to your church.
We needed her support to prove
that Nathan did this.
- Is Zach OK?
I want to see him.
- We, uh, we haven't found Zach.
- So how do you know
this Bar-Jonah did it?
Did he confess?
- No.
No, but we have a ton
of evidence showing
that he did it.
- So where is Zach then?
- We, um
We don't think that we're
ever gonna find Zach's body,
Rachel.
(sniffles and sobs)
I need you to look.
(sobs)
- No.
(sobbing)
- Now we just need you
to take the stand
so that we can convict this guy.
- (sobbing) No, he's not dead.
My baby's not dead.
- Rachel, listen to me.
If you don't testify
that Zach is dead,
we don't have a case.
- (growling) Get out.
Find my son.
(screaming) Get out!
Get out.
- That destroyed the case.
There was nowhere to go
and nothing more to do.
And so we had to dismiss
the case the day before trial.
And it was a blow.
(resigned chuckle)
And I just couldn't really grasp
that all that work basically
went down the tubes.
It would have been really
nice to get him on Zach
and to find Zach's body
but in the end
the real concentration was,
"Let's make sure this
monster never gets out again."
So we spent months working
on Bar-Jonah's codes.
And in the end they basically
revealed what he had done
to Zach Ramsay.
He butchered him
and he threw the remains away.
And the evidence was
there inside the codes.
That led us to more victims.
two little boys
that lived above him.
Although we weren't able
to put him away for Zach,
we were able to put him away
for the other molestations
and gave him
a 130-year sentence.
So he went away
for life, basically.
- Hello?
Guys!
Hello?
- It really brought me down
and destroyed
my marriage in the end.
It caused horrible pain.
I went down. Alcohol, drugs,
everything
trying to numb it.
(sniffles)
The only good thing that did
come from this was that
Nathan died in prison,
a miserable man.
And so he lost in the end.
And he didn't hurt anybody else.
- I know exactly what I'm doing.
- Looking back,
if my kid disappeared
and the police were never able
to produce any physical evidence
that he was dead
I would want to keep the faith
that someday he's gonna
walk through that door.
Because actually resigning
to what really
happened is horrible.
♪♪♪